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Own a Samsung smart TV? Then take note: Your television is not only listening, it's sending your data to a third party, the Independent reports. The TV's voice-recognition software lets you give it orders, but the product's privacy policy warns that "personal or other sensitive information ... will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition." Samsung tells the BBC that the third party is Nuance, the company that does Samsung's speech-to-text conversion. But intellectual property lawyer Corynne McSherry says it would be nice to see that clarified in Samsung's policy, the Daily Beast reports. "And I’d definitely like to know whether my words were being transmitted in a secure form," she says.

An activist tweets that Samsung's policy sounds a lot like the description of "telescreens" in George Orwell's dystopian novel, 1984—which reads in part, "Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by [the screen]." Unnervingly, it wasn't clear how often "the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork." Samsung, however, says it doesn't keep voice data, and customers can opt to turn off voice-recognition or even unplug the TV from Wi-Fi. And Samsung isn't alone: the Verge reports that XBoxes already use voice recognition while being connected to the Internet. "Samsung's privacy policy is not unique; its rhetoric just happens to be similar to that of a well-known sci-fi novel," the Verge says.

Doesn't this constitute an unconstitutional and unlawful breach of privacy? HOW ARE THEY GETTING AWAY WITH IT?

Lynne

Feb 10, 2015 1:18 PM CST

I certainly hope my old TV lasts until I die. Keeping my old not-so-smart phone too. In fact, it sounds like purchasing ANY new electronics is a bad idea. Note to self....do not purchase ANYTHING with voice recognition. Oh crap....I just realized my iPad has voice recognition...I guess it's safe to assume I've been recorded already.

BrushMan

Feb 10, 2015 10:06 AM CST

Remember the Samsung ("Big Brother") tv in Winston Smith's little apartment? That was back in 1984.